


cumulonimbus

by fatalize



Series: Fruits Basket Childhood [5]
Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 03:32:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15306525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatalize/pseuds/fatalize
Summary: The dark, dark room was never something he got used to.Sometimes, in his solitude, he would think of his life before with his family.





	cumulonimbus

**Author's Note:**

> And now we have my personal favorite, Yuki. He's one of the characters who, in canon, we already know quite a bit about his childhood, so I wanted to mix what we're already presented with in the manga and what we haven't necessarily seen... and that's how this came about, I guess.
> 
> This is the last completed draft of these drabbles I have for now... I haven't been able to write much lately, so I don't know when exactly the next update in this series will be. Hopefully it won't be too long.

            The dark, dark room was never something he got used to.

            He thought he might, just like he thought he might get used to Akito, would get used to not seeing his mother and his brother much anymore. How he would get used to the fact that his friends’ memories were erased. That he’d get used to all of this, that he’d come to like it, even. Because he was the rat, they said, because he was special.

            But in the dark, dark, dark room there was little comfort and no hope. He thought briefly that maybe there would be reprieve in death—but wasn’t this death, this darkness, this emptiness, this lack of sensation?

            Was he already dead?

            “Are you going to die, Yuki?”

            Akito.

            His whole world had somehow become two things: darkness, and Akito’s voice.

            His world consisted of so much Akito that it was like whatever he said was true, was the law of the isolated room the two of them inhabited.

            “You’re just my toy. Your mother sold you.”

            Yes. Yes, that’s true.

            “Your world is pitch-black, just like mine.”

            Also true.

            “Are you going to die, Yuki?”

            Yes, I am.

* * *

            In the dark, dark room Yuki had time to think and think and think even when he didn’t want to, would think until he was no more than an exoskeleton, his heart empty and blank, dissipating into the black fog around him.

            Sometimes he would think of his mother.

            His father was rarely home and Ayame always seemed to be flitting in and out of the house like a never-idle worker bee, and Yuki couldn’t tell if he was actually working hard or if he was careless, lazily floating from flower to flower. He knew that they had the zodiac in common, but it was never really brought up unless their mother wanted to brag about how grateful she was that her second child was the rat. That now she didn’t have to worry.

            When Ayame was home it was loud. When Ayame was not home it was quiet. Ayame’s presence, then, was noise; he was like a thunderstorm, perhaps even a hurricane—his absence like the eye. Yuki’s mother and his brother would get into fights often, though from what Yuki heard, it was more of a one-sided argument than anything else, Ayame being his normal ranting boisterous self and his mother working herself up and shouting, not getting through.

            “What do you _mean_ you want to open a clothing store?” Yuki heard his mother yell one day. “Why something like _that?_ ”

            “No, no, dear mother, not a simple clothing store—nothing so base and mediocre as that, I assure you—I don’t intend to spoil the family name with something common, as I’m sure you’re worrying about. Fashion, dear mother, is my passion—I want to design, to create, to spread the wealth of my mind, the glamorous beauty that I know exists within it, and share it with the poor, hapless dullards of the world dying to express themselves with extravagance! To invigorate passion and beauty in the hearts of any man or woman that seeks my guidance!”

            Yuki couldn’t see them from his room but he could feel the rage coming off his mother in palpable waves. He always wondered why she let Ayame ramble on without interrupting him. How she could stand it. The way Ayame produced those colorful run-on sentences was akin to the way a magician produces pigeons out of thin air—your mind can’t keep up with what just happened or how it happened, but it’s quite the show nonetheless.

            “Okay. You want to do _fashion_.” Yuki pictured his mother rubbing her temples. Her voice was calm the way rumbling thunder was calm, how it was just a low noise amidst the storm, gentle compared to a violent flash of lightning. “I’m prepared to send you to a good—an _excellent_ —college. You can go work for your father. You’re smart and get good grades, somehow. And you’re willing to throw it all away to do what? Sew?”

            “On the contrary, I believe I will be using the resources of my mind to their fullest capacity in order to benefit as many people as possible. Business is business, mother, no matter what kind of business it is—any skills you hope I would acquire I have no intention of shrugging off, as I plan to use them to enhance my profession. I’m merely steering them in the direction most suited to my personality.”

            Ayame could make a good argument, Yuki thought. But still his mother only seemed to get more perplexed, angry, and tongue-tied, until she was defeated and had had enough.

            The lightning cracked. “Fine! Do what you want with your life, see if I care. If you want to embarrass me by making a career out of _sewing dresses_ or whatever, then do it. Just go.”

            “I’m glad you understand, mother,” Ayame said, and although he sounded like how he normally did Yuki picked up on the fact that his voice is a little bit lower, a little bit slower. “So if you’ll excuse me, I have an embroidery class to get to. Ta-ta for now.”

            Footsteps, _clack clack clack_. The front door opened, closed. Yuki could hear his mother sigh.

            The air was still charged with negative ions, the storm passing but not quite gone yet. Yuki peeked his head out from his room, saw his mother in the kitchen with her head in her hands. Without looking up she said, “Please, don’t ever become like your brother.”

_Is nii-san not coming home?_ he didn’t ask. _Is what nii-san wants really that shameful?_ he didn’t ask. _Why do you and nii-san always fight?_ he didn’t ask.

            Yuki just gave one single nod of his head, and turned around.

* * *

            Maybe if he had asked something, had fought a little harder, he wouldn’t have ended up here. He never asked his mother why and so he let her lead him here. He didn’t ask Akito why he did all the things he did—but even if he did, Akito may have gotten mad and put him in here anyway.

            He tried to ask only once for something but he didn’t have the words and it wasn’t enough. He looked at Ayame the last time he had seen him, tried to reach out because a sudden feeling of unease had gripped him and he wanted to talk to his brother, at least once, and Ayame always acted like he could do anything. So he reached out for Ayame and brushed his hand and Ayame barely glanced back once before continuing to walk away.

            And now he was abandoned, without the strength or will or desire to get up to move to find some way out because there was no way out, only sinking further into the swamp of inkwell darkness that Akito had become so fond of.

            Mother

            Mother Mother Mother Mother Mother

            In the dark, inside his heart that was fading in the nothingness, Yuki silently cried out for a mother.


End file.
